Thoughts on gun control?
 

What are your thoughts on gun control?
What should the government do about guns in light of what has happened this past year, but at the same not violating the 2nd amendment?

Second Amendment:
There has already been another school shooting and we aren't even two weeks into 2013 yet so there's no denying something needs to change.

Personally when I turn 21 I want to purchase a handgun as a self defense measure. Just a 9mm probably, something light and low recoil.
I honestly feel that I would be safer having one. I plan on living on my own by then and I am absolutely terrified of the thought of someone breaking into my home and I am also insecure about my ability to defend myself in a dangerous situation.
With all that said, I do support the government mandating extensive background checks on every purchase of a firearm, banning high-capacity magazines, and also banning assault rifles. For no apparent reason the Republican Party and the NRA oppose these measures.

Thoughts?

if you have a gun, it's more dangerous. People won't break in your home if you are there. if they do and their a group and you point the gun on them, they will immediately shoot you. my uncle got shot because of it.
hes not dead btw.

They made these amendments when there was actually a need for such guns. It is entirely outdated IMO

"In 1791, the United States had recently battled England for its independence; France owned the vast Mississippi watershed; and another war with England loomed. Yet, even in 1791, this right to bear arms was deemed conditional." (The Seattle Times)

"The 2nd Amendment (the right to bear arms) was meant to give civilians power to form militias and overthrow corrupt entities that took over the US government by force. In this day and age, no amount of armed civilians could ever feasibly hope to depose a tyrant who gained control of the US government with the US military forces under his control.

If the 2nd Amendment were to remain applicable for this day and age, shouldn't it be expanded to include the right to maintain tanks and rockets too?" (http://www.quora.com/Second-Amendmen...s-it-necessary)

I mean, the common argument for having a gun is for protection. Protection from what? A robber? There have been steel baseball bats for ages. Another person with a gun? Ironic isn't it? And who is protecting everyone else from you if you have a gun? So should everyone have a gun in their back pockets? Do you live so uncertain of your safety that you are willing to take another's life because of it?

Another reason is for sport. Shooting clay pidgins or hunting. Things like this could be made where you RENT a gun to do these activities on hunting grounds and have to return the product before you leave. A gun is a tool for killing. Period.



Of course there will always be crazy people, guns or not, that will do you harm. Knives, pushing onto a train track, etc are always going to be there if you take guns out of the equation. However, it's quicker to just off someone with a gun. These are my personal opinions, so you can disagree and that is fine, but I do like listening to other sides of the argument, so for lack of a better term, shoot.

Until all guns are banned indefinitely, yes I would feel safer if I owned a gun.

you would feel, but not be.

Even if all guns were legally banned, criminals would still find ways to get them illegally.

Banning guns won't do anything, many of these psychotic criminals get guns illegally anyways, however I agree with some of the propositions they are proposing. Requiring background checks for all gun owners and banning large magazine clips/assault rifles is a good start.

Has anyone realized that it's been the unstable, mental people that snap? There must have been signs or initial bouts of insanity. Were attacking the wrong problem. We need to give people mandatory psychological evaluations throughout their early lives and keep track of who is unstable.

Maybe even increase the "therapy" that could be offered to them, since the people in their lives aren't being good influences. I mean, one of the shooters had a mom who looked like she didn't care (I say this because she knew how he was and ignored the fact that guns and ammo were being bought.

In my view, many parents out there are either too young or don't want to be parents, and their offspring suffer. Then we have an army of ignorant do nothings who are emotionally unstable and unhealthy. Even if these unstable people attain high status, they still snap at some point.

Anyway, gun regulation will help, at first... But it'll be like putting a band aid on a deep gash. It'll be harder to get guns privately (which I don't mind), but those people who are being left unchecked will continue to spawn, solving nothing.

All the countries with ban on guns have significantly lower violent crime rates than the U.S.
James Holmes, the Aurora Colorado shooter, bought his guns legally including an AR-15 assualt rifle. Adam Lanza who shot up Sandy Hook simply took his mother's guns that she had bought and owned legally.

Saying that a ban on guns wouldn't do anything is complete ignorance.

A ban on guns would take guns away from people who can stop those mass shooting. Let's say guns were banned prior to the shootings, I'm sure they would have found a way to obtain them illegally. I agree with Shock here, we need mental health care reform not a ban on firearms.

I heard now Biden is gonna talk to big gun game companies (such as activision) about how he thinks that COD is causing the shootings

There is no prefect solution. No one is saying a ban on firearms completely is a good idea, but taking a few steps to make it harder for these shootings to occur is all that is necessary (smaller clips, illegalize assault weapons, etc.), just like drunk driving fatal car accidents have gone down due to stricter regulations.

i dont see why people consider firearms as necessities..no one in my country owns a gun and so far we've had no accidents involving guns (the last 15 years anyway)

it might be a different case in the US though..since the population there is much bigger. i still think a ban in gun ownership is the way to go..id really feel unsafe if i knew my friend owned a firearm

I dont understand your logic.
Nobody was there to save those 27 kindergarten children from getting blown away, if guns were banned that man wouldve never had those guns to commit the massacre.

I wasn't specifically talking about that shooting. I was speaking in a more general sense of self defense. Either way banning guns entirely isn't the solution. Stricter gun regulations, improved mental health care, and a crack down on the illegal sales of guns is what will will make a difference.

Banning guns still won't stop these types of incidences. The insane/mentally unstable will simply acquire other weapons, or get them illegally. Banning guns is one of those solutions that will keep the majority of everyone happy, but won't have a long lasting impact.

The best solution in my opinion, is to invest money into mental health awareness and free counselling/treatment.

Stopping a mentally unstable individual in possession of a hammer/knife is considerably easier than one with an automatic assault rifle.

I agree that we should invest in mental health awareness and free treatment; although a ban on gun may seem attractive at first, I don't think 2013 or anytime in the near future is a good time to do it. There's too many people that already have guns, and having a gun ban, even without dealing with plausible riots and the black market, might be more expensive than we can handle. After all, how are we going to ensure that nobody has a gun after the ban is implemented? If it's knocking at their front door, I don't think it's going to work out very well.

I'm a taxpayer and I don't want my money being wasted on funding some lunatic's shrink sessions.

Easy for you to say since you're Canadian and your country is accustom to paying high taxes.

Amen to that, and I don't live in the USA. (in Australia, you have to have a 'Good Reason' to own a firearm)

Even if it means the possible prevention of these mass shootings? Also you do realize a ban on firearms would cost just as much in taxes as mental healthcare reform. It costs money to go around and obtain people's personal firearms.

Good quote for you to ponder on Rexx:

Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. So keep dangerous people away from guns.

Hand guns should stay legal but, theirs no need for people to use and buy an assault rifle...

Guns aren't the problem, people will use whatever they want to carry out a terrorist attack. People have used cyanide pills, planes and box cutters, fertilizer, car exhaust, and gas showers. All banning guns will do is take weapons from innocent people.

Guns should be more difficult for someone to get a hold of but not removed from society.

I like the way it is in New Zealand. You need a license. It doesn't stop stuff completely, but it still makes it less common. It means you have to be a certain type of person to have a gun. It's also illegal to use one within 20 meters of a town or house or infrastructure or whatever it is.

I'm not entirely sure. I can't say I've followed gun laws closely. But I do think they should be controlled, and the people that use them, and I do think that using your guns to murder people is a bad idea. They should be used for defense in a zombie apocalypse, for recreational hunting (in legal areas, obviously), and if you're in a shooting club or something, maybe that, in my opinion

Rexx, as much as I like and respect your opinions, I almost completely disagree. Banning guns would maybe stop the extremely stupid criminals from getting them. Criminals do not follow laws. It's illegal to steal, yet criminals still steal. It's illegal to kill, yet criminals still kill. A law banning guns would be no different, because criminals do not follow laws. I DO think it would be a good idea to make people do better background checks before they sell guns, and if you want to sell online, you have to have someone do a background check on both the seller and the buyer. But then again, criminals may completely disobey those laws.

People who want guns are always going to get guns, just like people who want drugs are always going to get guns, and just like people who wanted alcohol during prohibition got exactly that. Banning guns altogether will not keep guns out of the hands of wrongdoers. The illegal gun market would grow quickly to adhere to the needs of those who are set to murder and can't be dissuaded by a law that they cannot have a gun.

We'd end up having a country where only the criminals had guns. Recently there was a shooting in San Antonio where a man attempted to start a massacre. He was unsuccessful because, after he shot one person, another man who was secretly (and legally) armed shot him before he could kill any other people. Of course, this kind of information isn't reported by the media, so it probably happens more than you think. I only know this because I'm somewhat close to San Antonio and seek out this type of information. Most people around me don't have a clue about it either. This kind of thing happens more than any of us know. Attempting to remove guns from the hands of American people isn't the answer.

If you're insinuating that we should raise taxes, I'm going to continue to disagree with you. Right now the issue in our nation is that we're overspending money. It's not always necessarily on useless programs, but more often than not it's just a misuse of money. The education and military systems need to face reform. At the rate America is going, just raising taxes without reform is just going to cause the nation to overspend that money and plunge us further into debt.

To prove my point, the average spending per student, nationwide, in public schools is about $12,744
. The average spending per student, nationwide, in private schools is about $8,549. It's public knowledge that private schools produce students with much higher SAT/ACT scores who go on to a much greater future. This clearly shows that money spent in systems does not directly correlate with the quality of that system. Instead of simply pumping more money into systems such as the education system, the systems should face reform and have their money reallocated. (Here's my source for the statistics: http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.co...-on-education/)

If they did what they did in Australia (buy the guns back off people) it would basically be like taking them of the honest people and letting the bad people keep them, it will be incredibly hard to do it with Americas population, hell, it was hard with Australia's, so GL.

Guns should be available for everyone and all so long as it is restricted only to your house, shooting ranges and unrestricted hunting areas. If it is in public (say you just bought it and are taking it home) it must be disasssembled or unloaded. Otherwise you can be charged with a felony for having a loaded weapon. If you plan on taking a gun to another person's house you must have their consent otherwise you can be arrested. Those who have committed a number misdemeanors or any felony they will not be allowed to own any guns whatsoever. Don't get rid of guns completely, because listen: Someone breaks into your house at night with a knife and threatens to kill your family. You could call the police, but who knows if they'll be here in time? If you had a gun you'd be able to defend yourself and your family. Again, as it was said before. Guns don't kill people. But people do. So what we need to do is increase education about guns and how dangerous they could be and how serious charges could be if you misuse them. Let's say tomorrow someone shoots the President and takes over the country and threatens to take away your rights. As the people, it would be our responsibility to restore democracy but we couldn't do that because we can't start a revolution without weapons.

I get the point of the quote, but the physics say the bullet kills, not the gun or the person.

The human causes the bullet. Without a person, would the bullet come out of the fun and kill? Nope. And guns wouldn't exist without us anyway. We created the whole problem of guns, we shouldn't make excuses and blame other things.

only two months ago my best friend was killed in a gun accident, I personally think guns should be more controlled, but in the view of a hunter or sport shooter I would be upset.

Aside from the meaning of the saying, the physical damage is dealt by the bullet. The person has the intent and the execution of the action, but they aren't directly damaging anything. The bullet is the small surface area traveling at high speeds that creates bullet wounds.

Just call it my literal interpretation. I've been told it's annoying, but I don't care. It's just who I am.

I don't find you annoying? Never have. I've only read your posts though.

But I don't think it matters whether the person directly did it or not. They caused it. That's what should matter. You don't see courts getting the gun and the bullet out of the body and throwing them in a jail cell.

What if the teachers, or the principle had been carrying a fire arm? If a teacher had a gun when he shot his way through the window, they could've shot that man so full of holes before he could climb through the window. Of course crime rates would probably go down if the second amendment were to be removed, but sick people would still find another way to kill if they wanted to. On the same day of the shooting a man in China killed the same amount of people WITH A KNIFE.

Honestly can't tell if you're trolling or not. The solution isn't to give everyone guns to protect themselves.

By the way, the Chinese school stabbing injured 22, and killed none.

Well, I guess both are to blame. Person + Bullet.

Lets murder the murderers before they murder us!

Wars in a nutshell.

So if someone broke into your house and you shot them in self defense you would be arrested in New Zealand?

So you think there should guns in the same place where hundreds or thousands of kids go everyday? What if a teacher just left their gun sittin on their desk and someone decided to pick it up?
Too many liability issues.

Oh, no. You have the right to defend yourself in a life threatening situation.

I know how to make Illinois a safer place! Roll tanks in the gang infested south side of Illinois. Those guys will piss their pants and commit suicide.

Theres a lot of things they can do but Americans are always quick to cry about their rights blah blah freedom of this and freedom of that rights rights. What they need to do is put harder restriction to qualify for a gun permit. They also need to make harsher punishments for people that get caught with illegal guns. But none of this will ever happen the American government pampers their citizens to much.